Miranda Shifflett remained on Kelley Street. Sometimes, in the hot delirium of a summer night, the sweat-dampened sheets roped around her ankles and balled in her fists, she would dream her sons were with Bree Wilson, that the woman had loaded them in her U-Haul trailer and rolled off to Ocean City, Maryland. She saw Bree laughing on the beach, her jeans rolled up to her dark knees and her hair windswept and askew. And nearby, her boys, pink from sun, kicked up sand and saltwater, tossed starfish and clumps of seaweed at one another. Gulls swooped overhead. When she woke from these dreams, the taste of bile and citrus in the back of her throat, Miranda realized that the pastel beach was her brain’s version of heaven. Her own mind was trying to tell her that her children were dead.
She began to hate the sight of young boys, their vitality and bravado. She wished all the boys on Kelley Street would disappear: the athletic boys and the bookish boys, the chubby boys and frail boys, the pretty boys and pockmarked boys, the sweet boys and macho boys, the black, white, Latino, and half-half boys. There were days when she prayed that all the sons in the world would vanish, and she’d no longer be alone in her mother-grief. She remained at that house, waiting, she thought, for her boys to return, and if not that, for the police to come bearing grave news, and if not that, for her pain to go away. And if the pain wouldn’t go away, she’d wait until she got used to it, and if she didn’t, she’d wait to see her sons in paradise. Because what else was there to do if the boys were never found? What else could a body do when the children never came home?